How Startups Can Use Testimonials Effectively

Taking advantage of testimonials for your startup is extremely important, but you need know to what to include, where to put them, and how to use them to your benefit. In this post, we’re going to look at how to get testimonials, what makes a testimonial so great, and how to use them both efficiently and effectively.

What Makes Testimonials So Great?

Testimonials can drastically increase sign-ups and sales for your project. Why? First off, they build trust, your testimonials are your current customers personally telling your potential customers what is so great about your product or service, in a non-sales pitch way, unlike the rest of your website’s content.

The majority of us put more trust in a review or feedback from someone who has experience with a product, like our friends. That is exactly what testimonials are.

Testimonials have the power to change the minds of even the most skeptic of customers.

Getting Your Testimonials

We now know why and how testimonials are so great with marketing, growing, and scaling your startup. The next question we may be asking ourselves is, How do I get testimonials to showcase to new customers? Let’s walk-through the steps together.

1. Simply ask your customers

Don’t be afraid to ask your customers how they like your product, and firstly always ask the authoring customer permission if you can use their feedback as a testimonial wherever it’s going to be published.

Be sure to ask your customers at the right time, for example, after you’ve just helped them solve a major problem, after they have thanked you numerous times with awesome feedback, or after you have delivered a product or service without being late.

Additionally, if you want to help your customers write a top-notch testimonial you can ask them questions to inspire great feedback from them like:

• What are some improvements you have seen in your business since purchasing my product?
• How would you describe the effectiveness of our customer support?
• What are some problems that you had beforehand that encouraged you to purchase our product?

2.Using social networks

Many customers will share and post great (and maybe not so great) feedback on your social networks. While you may already have a number of testimonials that customers have already posted on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, some ways to encourage social media users to post them are:

• Host a photo contest with them wearing or using your product.
• Host a video or referral contest.

3. Directly inside your product

Consider adding a survey or rating widget inside your website or app to make it easier for users to leave their feedback and write testimonials. Some companies have even gone the extra mile by rewarding users that leave feedback a small discount on their next purchase or their next charge.

The Traits of A Good Testimonial

We don’t want to use testimonials that will hurt our business even more. We need to choose the right testimonials to sell our potential customers and prevent using testimonials to backslide.

A good testimonial is from someone potential customers can relate to.

Your potential customers want to discover that your product or service is helping someone in the same situation as they are.

A good testimonial displays customer’s results

If a testimonial simply states “Wow, this is an amazing product!” it does not show the results of using the product or service, you need testimonials to be clear on the results: “Your service tripled our traffic in under 15 days, doubled our sales, and people keep coming back!”

A good testimonial compares

You want your visitors to see what your service offers what your competition doesn’t. Showcase the testimonials that clearly differentiates and gives you the benefit above your competition and comparable products.

A good testimonial isn’t over-edited

Unless someone has a major grammar issue, different patterns of voice and copy separate your sales-pitches on your website from real, trustworthy customers that have used your product. As a general rule, if you don’t feel comfortable about publishing a customer’s testimonial without changing it, don’t use it anywhere.

Using Your Testimonials Wisely

1. Make them beautiful

You may have the most beautifully worded testimonial, but you don’t want to make them ugly by wrapping them in an awfully designed frame with ugly un-readable text; which will give your website the effect of being cheap and unworthy of customers. Design the beautifully, simply, while still being readable and making them stand-out.

2.Don’t Forget To Include Important Elements

A photo: Adding the customer’s profile picture from Twitter, Facebook or email, can improve the personal connection between them and your potential customers.

Business Information: Including some quick information like the name of the business, website, or Twitter, of the customer giving the testimonial. In some cases, depending on the type of business, even the location of the customer is beneficial.

A name:

It may sound silly, but many businesses neglect to add even the customer’s basic information, their name. This not only creates an extreme case of a non-personal connection but generally hurts the business more than helps.

3. Never write fake testimonials

While testimonials can be important and beneficial to your startup, never make them up. No matter how well written you think they are, people will find out the truth, and your fake testimonials won’t improve your business, it will make it worse. Lying will never help your business.

4. Ask permission

Before using any of your customer’s review and feedback as an official testimonial, ask them permission.

5. Inspire customers to get specific

Like we went over above in the “Simply ask your customers” tip, inspire and encourage customers to get specific in writing about their experience, benefits, and results of using your product. Asking customers relevant questions to help flow the feedback process is an effective way of doing this.

6. Don’t stop

Even when you think you have enough quality testimonials and awesome feedback from your customers, don’t stop looking for feedback and reviews from your customers. For the life of your startup, listening to the good and bad feedback from users and promoting the up-to-date good feedback as testimonials to the potential customers is important.

Conclusion

Have you had some share-worthy experience with getting and using testimonials effectively?

Originally published at startuplister.com on February 24, 2015.